What are you looking for in this year’s Cannes submissions?

In the past ten years, we have been searching for the purpose of our work as a creative. Every year ideas became more socially aware of the issues, needs and circumstances. This is what we want as creative industry. But we also need (as humans) to have fun or feel emotional. Because "purpose" for me also means making people happy, making people laugh or making people get goosebumps. And that's what I would like to see this year — more fun, beauty, and excitement.

How does impact look to you?

My view is that scale is essential for impact. When you envision a solution for a social or environmental problem, you should not overlook scale. Scale will enable your idea to reach more people or places. And that, that is when you can achieve impact.

How does innovation look to you?

For creative people, innovation has always been a very hard category. It is like a big science fair where you can make a difference for people and shape the future of our industry. I have always thought that this category is not very typical of advertising, but very demanding of creativity.

Buzzwords and key trends you think are defining this year?

This is definitely a year for AI. I've seen many ideas that use AI as a tool to provide solutions for people with a social goal. But on the other hand, there is also a vision of sustainability and low-tech to make these ideas accessible for different community contexts, such as farming or creating new job opportunities.

As a judge in the innovation category, what are the main criteria you use to evaluate the entries and their impact on society?

For this initial round, my personal criteria include social impact, how the project can be expanded to benefit the most people, what is the function of the resource or tech (if it’s just a means or the essence of the idea) and especially if it’s providing a real solution that alters the direction of the problem it is addressing.

How do you balance your creative vision with the technical challenges and opportunities of innovation projects?

I always give the same answer when people ask me how I approach creativity. Creativity is when you merge two concepts or two existing resources and you combine them to make a new one. What I mean is, you don't have to invent or envision sci-fi technologies; it's about how cleverly you use your creative thinking to make something useful and meaningful. In other words, always take technology as a possible resource or tool, but not as a must.